Development of noninvasive diagnostic techniques in clinical practice, especially sufficiently fast methods suitable forintraoperative use, remains a topical and challenging problem in modern medicine. Compressional Optical CoherenceElastography (OCE) that has a high potential to be intraoperatively applied. This study reports preliminary results onapplication of compressional OCE for identification of tumor margins and even differentiation of breast cancer typeswith low- and high- histological grades, i.e., a step towards creation of a kind of OCE-based optical biopsy. The reportedvariant of OCE utilized B-scans with scales ~2-4 mm comparable with typical scales of histological samples. Theapproach is based on the ability of OCE to quantitatively visualize distribution of the Young modulus (stiffness) instudied tissue samples, which then is used to perform "elasto-spectroscopy" generically resembling the massspectroscopyprocedures. The procedures of the OCE examination do not require any special preparation of tissuesamples and thus can be applied intraoperatively on time intervals ~ a few minutes with immediately available results. Inthe reported study, the samples after OCE examinations were subjected to histological studies and classification made byan experienced histopathologist. Comparison between the OCE results and histological data made it possible not only todistinguish between normal tissue and tumor (for determining resection boundary), but also to formulate OCE-basedcriteria allowing for differentiation between carcinomas of low grades and fairly good treatment prognosis and highgradeinvasive tumors with poor prognosis. Similarly, identification of not only invasive breast tumors, but also benignbreast lesions, intermediate between norm and malignant tumors can be made.
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